Introduction

These release notes cover changes in Community Enterprise (CE) Version 6.0.

Release Items

1. Administration Section Re-Design

CE 6.0 introduces the first stage of a visual re-design of the Administration Section of Community Enterprise.  The re-design improves usability and efficiency and includes re-formatting of the “buttons” in the Administration Section as well as many other stylistic and formatting elements. 

2. New Channel – Advanced Search
CE 6.0 marks the start of a dramatic increase in the depth and breadth of CE’s out-of-the-box content search capabilities. 

One of the new content search channels – the Advanced Search channel – provides users with full text searching of web pages, documents, and events within CE.  As shown in the graphic at right, users can search for content using all the words, any of the words, without the words, or with the exact phrase that they are looking for.

Search results can be ordered by document title, document date, or relevance score. Search results include not only document listings but full text searching of the contents of PDF, MS Word, and other file types.

The search results screen (as shown above at right), displays how many documents were searched, how many results were found, and what search term was used. The search results are ordered by the type of content.

The Advanced Search channel utilizes the powerful, built-in Verity enterprise search engine.  This enables CE clients to take advantage of a world class, enterprise level search system out-of-the-box at no additional expense.  Whereas most content management systems struggle to integrate 3rd party search utilities in a patchwork fashion that needs to be configured and maintained by technical staff and consultants, CE’s search requires no additional technical configuration or expense. 

3. New Channel – Simple Search
CE 6.0 includes the powerful Simple Search channel for full text searching of documents, web pages, articles, and events. The Simple Search channel in CE uses the underlying search system as the Advanced Search channel (see description above) but simplifies the interface and options.  While the quality of results is just as good as with Advanced Search, this channel is ideal for situations where users do not need to make as many choices about the details of the search criteria.

4. New Design Component – Search
As part of the suite of new content search features, CE 6.0 introduces a new search component for use in CE visual design templates (shown at right).  Similar in its look to the previous version of the search component in CE, this search box provides much more powerful search results because it uses CE’s new search system (as described above).  The configuration of this feature is similar to simple search (except that it appears within the design header and footer files) rather than as a content channel.

Future CE releases will provide additional search channels and features to provide clients and users with event more search options.  Together these options will provide CE clients and users with more robust functionality at a lower price than any comparable software product.

5. Discussion Board / Forum (Fusetalk)
CE version 6.0 introduces an integration with the powerful Fusetalk message board system.  Fusetalk is one of the premier message board systems on the Internet and provides CE clients with a powerful way to build their constituent communities at no extra cost.  In addition, Fusetalk includes a wide range of additional features such as email list serves, blogs, and more.  CE’s integration to Fusetalk includes design integration so that users will have a seamless experience when using the message board system within CE.  In addition, CE’s integration to Fusetalk includes login authentication so that users will only have to login once.  

6. Events Module – Clone Event
Starting with release 6.0, administrators will be able to clone existing events with a single click of the mouse.  This feature clones an existing event listing and many of the basic event related fields.  However, this feature does not clone custom fields in the event registration form or pricing fields.

7. Ecommerce Discounts / Coupons
CE 6.0 introduces an ecommerce discounting and coupon feature for events and membership registration.  This feature allows users who are registering for events and membership to input a discount redemption (i.e. coupon) code during check out which will reduce the registration fees by a pre-set amount. 

Administrators can create discounts (as shown at right) with a range of features including start and end dates as well as a choice between a dollar amount or percentage discount.

Once discounts have been created and used, administrators can view a comprehensive list of discounts in the system with key metrics like number of redemptions per discount.  In addition, CE’s Reports modules allow administrators to create reports with discount information. 

8. RSS Aggregator
CE 6.0 introduces a new RSS Aggregator feature  that allows administrators to add RSS feeds to the back end of CE.  The aggregator will then import new feed items on a daily basis (or more frequently) to CE’s Articles module.  These new articles can then be published to the front end of a CE site.  When published on the CE site these articles, like any other CE articles, can be RSS enabled for further feeds or aggregation.  

9. New Channel – Individual Organization Membership Registration
The Individual Organization Membership channel allows individual users on the front end of a web site to register and associate themselves with a member organization using the organization’s name and a password.  This channel is particularly useful for clients who need to track both individuals and organizations and the links between the two.  For example, a client whose members are organizations may need a way for individuals within those organizations to join the CE database and establish their connection with their employer in the database.  Enabling this process from the front of the web site is both a convenience to members and lessens staff administrative time.  This channel also allows individuals who do not know their organization’s registration information to add themselves in a pending status and request an association with their organization. 

10. New Channel – Organization Directory Search
The Organization Search is a new channel that allows users of a web site to search for organizations and see what individuals are listed with the organization. It also allows users to search for an individual and see what organizations they are listed with.  This channel is ideal for clients that track member organizations. 

11. CSS for Channels 
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) oriented design gets a major boost in CE 6.0.  It is now possible to apply CSS to all channels within CE.  That is, CE assigns each channel a unique ID that CSS designers can use to control the layout, position, styles, and other elements.  This change creates vast new possibilities for interface designers working with CE to format and manage the visual “look and feel” of CE’s channels. 

12. Contact Import – Organization Name
CE 6.0 adds an important enhancement to the Contact Import module which enables administrators to associate individual contact records with organization contact records during the contact import process.  For clients who track both contacts and organization (and the links between the two) this feature eliminates a time consuming manual step in data management activities. 

13. Membership Notification
The Membership Login feature includes an enhancement in CE 6.0 that enables members who are logged in to see key membership related information such as what type of membership they have, when their membership expires and a way to easily renew their membership.  This notification automatically turns on for members who are within 180 days of their expiration date.  

14. Reports Module – Update Report Data Enhancement
In CE, data is made reportable through a process called “Update Report Data” which runs automatically every night.  In addition, an administrator can update the reportable data manually at any time by clicking the “Update Report Data” link in the Reports module.  In version 6.0 when an administrator updates report data manually, each of CE’s 18 different Report Types (e.g. “Contacts,” “Events and Registrants,” etc.) can be updated individually and distinctly from the other report types.  This creates a time saving efficiency for administrators because in the past, all report types had to be updated at the same time even if the administrator only wanted to update data in one specific report type.  This grouped data updating could be very time consuming with large data sets.

15. New Channel – Latest News
CE version 6.0 includes a new channel called “Latest News.”  The Latest News Channel provides a new way to display articles in CE.  The channel displays the three most recent articles to the user.  The articles are shown by headline and summary in order to provide the user with a brief synopsis of the article.  Users can then click through to view the full text of the articles as well as a list of similar articles in CE.

16. Event Attendance
An enhancement in CE 6.0 enables users on the front end of a web site to see who is attending an event.  This enhancement allows administrators to set up lists of event attendees using the Contact Search module.  These lists can be associated with event listings on the front end of CE so that public users can see the information.  This feature complements CE’s existing administrative features that enable reporting on event registration.

17. Contact Profile – Notes Field
CE’s CRM functionality is improved in version 6.0 by the addition of a “Notes” feature.  The notes feature provides a text area within each contact profile to enable staff to write notes related to the contact quickly and easily. This feature is perfect for clients who need to keep detailed notes about members and constituents.  For example, you may speak by phone with a member or constituent and need to note information such as a follow up to do item, a description of the call that took place, or a specific piece of information from the call. The Notes field is a perfect place to note and store that information.  Moreover, this makes it easy to review past notes on the relationship with that individual.  And since CE is a centralized database, all past notes from different sources will be available in one record.  The Notes feature can be turned on or off within any screen in the contact profile.

18. Reports Module – New Credit Card Related Fields In Reports
In this enhancement, several credit card related fields are added to the reportable fields in two CE report types.  That is, the fields for credit card Type, credit card Name, and credit card Expiration Date were added to the Report Types for “Events and Registrants” and “Contacts and Membership.”   Although CE does not save any actual credit card numbers for security reasons, by making these related fields reportable makes it easier for clients to reconcile transactions in CE with their merchant accounts.

19. Login / Registration Form – Added Flexibility
A new level of flexibility has been added to the login / registration screen that is used with several CE channels.  This enhancement enables clients to change the order of forms on this screen or to remove either the login or registration form from the screen.  This is useful when a client wants to have the first fields that a user will see in a channel be either the login fields or the new registration fields.

20. Channel - Event Submission – Approval Notifications
In this enhancement to the Event Submission channel, when a user submits an event listing from the front end of CE and an administrator chooses to approve or not approve the enhancement, notifications will be emailed to the user who submitted the event providing them with approval status information.

21. Organization Module – Associated Contacts – Added Title Field
When viewing the Associated Contacts tab in an Organization profile, the Title field has been added to the display.  This will allow administrative users to more easily see the job titles of contacts who are associated with organization records in CE.

22. Individual Contacts – General Info Tab – Added Organization Listing
When viewing the General Info tab of an Individual Contact profile, the Organization association has been added to the display.  This will allow administrative users to quickly see a contact’s organization association(s) on the main screen of the contact records.  This association will also continue to be viewable in the Organizations tab of the Individual Contact profile.

23. Contact Search Channel – Added Email Approval
One of the valuable options in CE’s Contact Search module is a feature that, when turned on, allows users to email people who are part of the results set of their search (e.g. search for all staff or members).  A new administrative approval has been added to this tool that allows administrators to review and approve or reject emails before sending them to the list of contacts.  This approval step enables administrators to review emails to make sure that they are appropriate and conform to organization standards.

24. Manage Your Profile – Interests and Subscriptions Fields – Order Options Alphabetically
In this small enhancement to the Manage Your Profile page, the field options of both the Interests field and the Subscriptions field are ordered alphabetically rather than in the order that they were created.

25. New Page Layout
CE 6.0 includes a new page layout, as shown at right.  This layout joins the large existing library of page layouts.  Due to the ease of creating these layouts, CE is likely to have more additions to the page layout library in future releases.

26. Contact Search – Opting Out All Associated Contacts
In CE 6.0, a new filter option is added to the Contact Search filters which will allow all of the contacts associated with a particular organization record in CE to be opted in or out of the contact search.  This is useful, for instance, when member organizations want to be able to remove all their employees from directory searches.

27. Applications Module – Added Alias For "Apply"
In this small but helpful change, it is now easy to change the word “Apply” from the front end interface of the Applications module.  That is, the administrator can substitute more appropriate words like “Sign Up,” “Join,” and so forth.  This is important for clients who are not using the Applications module for traditional job or grant applications but rather are using it for other kinds of sign ups or opt ins.

28. New Design Component – Side Navigation
There is a small addition to CE’s library of design components in this release.  The new side navigation design component is similar to the existing side navigation design component with the difference that it includes the side navigation on a site’s home page as well as all the other site pages.  More information about this and other design components can be found in the CE Design Integration Guide.

29. Contact Search – Added Interest Field to Contact Search Field Options
The Contact Search module in CE now includes the Interests field.  With this addition, administrators can include the Interest field in Contact Search forms (e.g. “Search for Members” or “Search for Staff”) as well as in Contact Search results screens.  This allows front end users the possibility of searching for contacts based on their self-identified interests.

30. Visual Designs – New Sample Header and Footer Templates
CE 6.0 includes a new sample header (“sample_header.cfm”) and sample footer (“sample_footer.cfm”) template design files.  These files have been commented specifically to  provide context and guidance to designers who are creating new visual designs in CE.  These files can be accessed in the CE design folder (_data\global\designs) as well as in the CE Design Integration Guide.

31. Various Fixes and Enhancements
In addition, the Version 6.0 release includes a number of small fixes to issues in different modules including Communications, Contacts, Documents, Events, Membership, Pages,  Polls, Products and Store, and Settings.